I’m assuming this was a high school graduation picture, taken before
1920.

My grandparents maintained a lifelong
friendship with their cousins, and they visited often. So as a kid, I met a lot of old people. My memories of most of them are rather dim. But my memories of Elta are clear because she
was just so darn nice. And
friendly. And cheerful.

In the Cradock neighborhood of Portsmouth, Virginia where
I grew up, if you wanted to know what was going on in the community, you didn’t
need to read the newspaper or wait for the news broadcast. You just had to check with cousin Elta. “Elta the Gazette” – that’s what my
grandparents called her.

Who died? Who is getting married? When is the baby due? The preacher said
what? Elta the Gazette was our source
for any and all details that mattered. My grandmother could be telling about how many
flowers were at so-n-so’s funeral and about some store going out of
business. If we asked where she heard
that, her answer was usually, “The Gazette.”
Oh well, then, it had to be true.

How Elta managed to gather all the latest news (and
gossip) from the local community as well as from “back home” in Shenandoah
where she and my grandparents grew up was always the mystery. Did she have a Deep Throat source we didn’t
know about?

Left: My grandmother Lucille Rucker Davis
Right: Elta Sullivan Farrar

Maybe Elta’s knack for getting the scoop was just her
sweet and engaging personality that made people want to tell her things.

"Elta the Gazette" sats it all. I meet an old lady in our village who would qualify for a similar title. She tells me things I didn't know about myself and how I became know as 'Bob, The Bramble' to distinguish me from another man named Bob.

I love seeing your grandmother and Elta together as older women. How wonderful that they remained close all those years!

It's funny you commented about "old" people. My grandparents (all four of them) lived in Fresno their entire adult lives and they had a bunch of friends there. My recollection of visiting them was that Fresno was just a city of old people because that's all we saw. I haven't been there in 30 years and I wonder if it's still filled with just old people.

I'm guessing those who went to Elta for the latest gossip gave as much as they got. That pfirst portrait of Elta is so characteristic of the period between the wars. The shade os sepia and the way which it is mounted was peculiar to those decades, although it was far more common in the US than in the UK.

A sweet memento that really captured the essence of Elta. The girl's expressions in the second photo are priceless. My grandmother was a similar hub in the social network of the old analog days. She kept notes of every telephone conversation on a stenographer pad that recorded all the details of every call. I still have dozens of these pads, each a history of family and neighborhood news.

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About Me

My name is Wendy. About twenty years ago, I helped my mother research the Jolletts. Since retiring from teaching, I have expanded my research which I share here. When I’m not looking for my own family, I index for FamilySearch and the Greene County Historical Society.
Welcome to Jollett Etc. Please leave a comment to let me know you were here. If you have more information or believe we are related, EMAIL ME at wendymath at cox dot net